Big Little Lies (20 page)

Miss Barnes:
After that little drama on orientation day, I was steeling myself for a tough year, but it seemed to get off to a good start. They were a great bunch of kids, and the parents weren’t being too annoying. Then about halfway through the first term it all fell apart.

Two Weeks Before the Trivia Night

L
atte and a muffin.”

Jane looked up from her laptop, and then down again at the plate in front of her. There was an artful scribble of whipped cream on the plate next to the muffin. “Oh, thanks, Tom, but I didn’t order—”

“I know. The muffin is on the house,” said Tom. “I hear from Madeline that you’re a baker. So I wanted to get your expert opinion on this new recipe I’m trying. Peach, macadamia nut and lime. Crazy stuff. The lime, I mean.”

“I only bake muffins,” said Jane. “I never eat them.”

“Seriously?” Tom’s face fell a little.

Jane said hurriedly, “But I’ll make an exception today.”

The weather had turned cold this week, a little practice session for winter, and Jane’s apartment was chilly. That gray sliver of ocean she could see from her apartment window just made her feel colder still. It was like a memory of summers lost forever, as if she lived in a gray, brooding, postapocalyptic world. “God, Jane, that’s a bit dramatic. Why don’t you take your laptop and set yourself up at a table at Blue Blues?” Madeline had suggested. So Jane had started turning up each day with her laptop and files.

The café was filled with sun and light, and Tom had a wood-fire stove running. Jane gave a little exhalation of pleasure each time she stepped in the door. It was like she’d gotten on a plane and flown into an entirely different season compared with her miserable, damp apartment. She made sure that she was only there in between the morning rush and the afternoon rush so she didn’t take up a paying table, and of course she ordered coffees and a small lunch throughout the day.

Tom the barista had begun to seem like a colleague, someone who shared the cubicle next to hers. He was good for a chat. They liked the same TV shows, some of the same music. (Music! She’d forgotten the existence of music, like she’d forgotten books.)

Tom grinned. “I’m turning into my grandma, aren’t I? Force-feeding everyone. Just try one mouthful. Don’t eat it all to be polite.” Jane watched him go, and then averted her eyes when she realized she was enjoying looking at the breadth of his shoulders in his standard black T-shirt. She knew from Madeline that Tom was gay, and in the process of recovering from a badly broken heart. It was a cliché, but it also seemed to be so often true: Gay men had really good bodies.

Something had been happening over the last few weeks, ever
since she’d read that sex scene in the bathroom. It was like her body, her rusty, abandoned body, was starting up again of its own accord, creaking back to life. She kept catching herself idly, accidentally looking at men, and at women too, but mainly men, not so much in a sexual way, but in a sensual, appreciative, aesthetic way.

It wasn’t beautiful people like Celeste who were drawing Jane’s eyes, but ordinary people and the beautiful ordinariness of their bodies. A tanned forearm with a tattoo of the sun reaching out across the counter at the service station. The back of an older man’s neck in a queue at the supermarket. Calf muscles and collarbones. It was the strangest thing. She was reminded of her father, who years ago had an operation on his sinuses that returned the sense of smell he hadn’t realized he’d lost. The simplest smells sent him into rhapsodies of delight. He kept sniffing Jane’s mother’s neck and saying dreamily, “I’d forgotten your mother’s smell! I didn’t know I’d forgotten it!”

It wasn’t just the book.

It was telling Madeline about Saxon Banks. It was repeating those stupid little words he’d said. They needed to stay secret to keep their power. Now they were deflating the way a jumping castle sagged and wrinkled as the air hissed out.

Saxon Banks was a nasty person. There were nasty people in this world. Every child knew that. Your parents taught you to stay away from them. Ignore them. Walk away. Say, “No. I don’t like that,” in a loud, firm voice, and if they keep doing it, you go tell a teacher.

Even Saxon’s insults had been school yard insults.
You smell. You’re ugly.

She’d always known that her reaction to that night had been too big, or perhaps too small. She hadn’t ever cried. She hadn’t told anyone. She’d swallowed it whole and pretended it meant nothing, and therefore it had come to mean everything.

Now it was like she wanted to keep talking about it. A few days
ago, when she and Celeste had their morning walk, she’d told her a shorter version of what she’d told Madeline. Celeste hadn’t said all that much, except that she was sorry and that Madeline was absolutely right and Ziggy was nothing like his father. The next day, Celeste gave Jane a necklace in a red velvet bag. It was a fine silver chain with a blue gemstone. “That gemstone is called a lapis,” said Celeste in her diffident way. “It’s supposedly a gemstone that ‘heals emotional wounds.’ I don’t really believe that stuff—but anyway, it’s a pretty necklace.”

Now Jane put a hand to the pendant.

New friends? Was that it? The sea air?

The regular exercise was probably helping too. She and Celeste were both getting fitter. They’d both been so happy when they noticed they didn’t have to stop and catch their breath when they reached the top of the flight of stairs near the graveyard.

Yes, it was probably the exercise.

All she’d needed all this time was a brisk walk in the fresh air and a healing gemstone.

She dug her fork into the muffin and lifted it to her mouth. The walks with Celeste were also returning her appetite. If she didn’t watch out, she’d get fat again. Her throat closed up on cue, and she replaced the fork. So, not quite cured. Still weird about food.

But she must not offend lovely Tom. She picked up her fork and took the tiniest bite. The muffin was light and fluffy, and she could taste all the ingredients that Tom had mentioned: macadamia, peach, lime. She closed her eyes and felt everything: the warmth of the café, the taste of the muffin, the by now familiar smell of coffee and secondhand books. She took another, bigger forkful and scraped up some of the cream.

“OK?” Tom leaned over a table close to hers, cleaning it with a cloth he took from his back pocket.

Jane lifted a hand to indicate her mouth was full. Tom took a book that a customer had left on the table and replaced it on one of the higher shelves. His black T-shirt lifted away from his jeans, and Jane saw a glimpse of his lower back. Just a perfectly ordinary lower back. Nothing particularly notable about it. His skin during the winter was the color of a weak latte. During the summer it was the color of hot chocolate.

“It’s wonderful,” she said.

“Mmmm?” Tom turned around. There were only the two of them in the café right now.

Jane pointed her fork at the muffin. “This is amazing. You should charge a premium.” Her mobile rang. “Excuse me.”

The name on the screen said
SCHOOL
. The school had only called her once before, when Ziggy had a sore throat.

“Ms. Chapman? This is Patricia Lipmann.”

The school principal. Jane’s stomach contracted.

“Mrs. Lipmann? Is everything all right?” She hated the craven note in her voice. Madeline spoke to Mrs. Lipmann with cheerful, condescending affection, as if she were a dotty old family butler.

“Yes, everything is fine, although I would like to arrange a meeting with you as a matter of some urgency if I could? Ideally today. Would around two p.m. suit you, just before pickup?”

“Of course. Is everything—”

“Lovely. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”

Jane put down her phone. “Mrs. Lipmann wants a meeting with me.”

Tom knew most of the kids, parents and teachers at the school. He’d grown up in the area and attended the school himself back when Mrs. Lipmann was a lowly Year 3 teacher.

“I’m sure you don’t have anything to worry about,” he said. “Ziggy is a good kid. Maybe she wants to put Ziggy in a special class or something.”

“Mmmm.” Jane took another absentminded forkful of muffin. Ziggy wasn’t “gifted and talented.” Anyway, she already knew from the tone of Mrs. Lipmann’s voice that this wasn’t going to be good news.

Samantha:
Renata went off her head when the bullying started. Part of the problem was the nanny hadn’t been communicating, so it had been going on for a while without her knowing. Of course we now know that Juliette had other things on her mind besides her job.

Miss Barnes:
What parents don’t understand is that a child can be a bully one minute and a victim the next. They’re so ready to label! Of course, I do see this was different. This was . . . bad.

Stu:
My dad taught me: A kid hits you, you hit him back. Simple. It’s like everything these days. A trophy for every kid in the soccer game. A prize in every bloody layer of Hot Potato. We’re bringing up a generation of wimps.

Thea:
Renata
must
surely have blamed herself. The hours she worked, she barely saw her children! My heart just goes out to those poor little mites. Apparently they’re not coping well at the moment. Not coping well at all. Their lives will never be the same again, will they?

Jackie:
Nobody says anything about
Geoff
working long hours. Nobody asks if
Geoff
knew what was going on with Amabella. It’s my understanding Renata had a higher-paid, more stressful job than Geoff, but nobody blamed Geoff for having a career, nobody said, “Oh, we don’t see much of Geoff at the school, do we?” No! But
if the stay-at-home mums see a dad do pickup, they think he deserves a gold medal. Take my husband. He has his own little entourage.

Jonathan:
They’re my friends, not my entourage. You have to excuse my wife. She’s in the middle of a hostile takeover. That might be why she’s coming across a bit hostile. I think the school has to take responsibility. Where were the teachers when all this bullying was going on?

R
enata Klein has discovered that her daughter, Amabella, has been the victim of systematic, secret bullying over the last month,” said Mrs. Lipmann without preamble as soon as Jane sat down opposite her. “Unfortunately Amabella won’t say exactly what has been going on or who is involved. However, Renata is convinced that Ziggy is responsible.”

Jane gulped convulsively. It was strange that she still felt shocked, as though some crazily optimistic part of her really had believed that Ziggy was about to be put into some sort of special class for marvelous children.

“What sort of . . .” Jane’s voice disappeared. She cleared her throat with difficulty. She felt as though she were playing a role for which she wasn’t properly qualified. Her parents should be at this meeting. People of the same era as Mrs. Lipmann. “What sort of bullying?”

Mrs. Lipmann made a little face. She looked like a lady who lunched; a society wife with good clothes and an expensive skin care
regime. Her voice had that crystal-clear
don’t mess with me
quality that was very effective, apparently, even with the famously naughty Year 6 boys.

“Unfortunately we’re a little short on details,” said Mrs. Lipmann. “Amabella does have some unexplained bruises and grazes, and a . . . bite mark, and she has only said that ‘someone has been mean to her.’” She sighed and tapped perfectly manicured nails on the manila folder in her lap. “Look, if it weren’t for the incident on the orientation day, I wouldn’t have called you in until we had anything more definitive. Miss Barnes says that incident appeared to be a one-off. She has observed Ziggy closely, because of what happened, and she describes him as a delightful child, who is a joy to teach and appears to be very caring and kind in his interactions with the other children.”

The unexpected kindness of those words from Miss Barnes made Jane want to weep.

“Now, obviously we have a zero tolerance policy for bullying at Pirriwee Public. Zero. But in the rare cases where we do find cases of bullying, I want you to know that we believe we have a duty of care both to the victim and to the bully. So if we do find that Ziggy has been bullying Amabella, our focus won’t be on punishing him, but on ensuring the behavior stops, obviously, immediately, and then on getting to the bottom of
why
he is behaving this way. He’s a five-year-old boy, after all. Some experts say a five-year-old is incapable of bullying.”

Mrs. Lipmann smiled at Jane, and Jane smiled back warily.
But wait, he’s a delightful child. He hasn’t done this!

“Apart from what happened on orientation day, have there ever been any other incidents of this sort of behavior? At day care? Preschool? In Ziggy’s interactions with children outside the classroom?”

“No,” said Jane. “Absolutely not. And he always . . . Well.” She’d been about to say that Ziggy had always steadfastly denied Amabella’s
accusation from orientation day, but perhaps that just confused the issue. Mrs. Lipmann would think he had a history of lying.

“So there is nothing out of the ordinary in Ziggy’s past, his home life, his background, that you think we should know, that might be relevant?” Mrs. Lipmann looked at her expectantly, her face kind and warm, as if to let Jane know that nothing would shock her. “I understand that Ziggy’s father is not involved with his upbringing, is that right?”

It always took Jane a moment when strangers casually referred to “Ziggy’s father.” “Father” was a word that Jane associated with love and security. She always thought first of her own father, as if that must be surely whom they meant. She had to do a little leap in her mind to a hotel room and a downlight.

Well, Mrs. Lipmann, is this relevant? All I know about Ziggy’s father is that he was keen on erotic asphyxiation and humiliating women. He appeared to be charming and kind. He could sing
Mary Poppins
songs. I thought he was delightful—in fact, you’d probably think he was delightful too—and yet, he was not who he appeared to be at all. I guess you could describe him as a bully. So that may be relevant. Also, just to give you the whole picture, there is the possibility that Ziggy is actually my dead grandfather, reincarnated. And Poppy was a very gentle soul. So I guess it depends on whether you believe in a hereditary tendency toward violence, or reincarnation.

“I can’t think of anything relevant,” said Jane. “He has a lot of male role models—”

“Oh, yes, yes, I’m sure he does,” said Mrs. Lipmann. “Goodness. Some children here have fathers who travel or work such long hours, they never see them at all. So I’m certainly not implying that Ziggy is missing out because he’s growing up in a single-parent household. I’m just trying to get the whole picture.”

“Have you asked him about this?” asked Jane. Her heart twisted at the thought of Ziggy’s being questioned by the school principal without her there. He slept with a teddy bear. He sat on her lap and
sucked his thumb when he got tired. It still seemed like a minor miracle to her that he could walk and talk and dress himself, and now here he was living this whole other life separate from her, with big, grown-up, scary dramas taking place.

“I have, and he denies it quite emphatically, so without Amabella’s corroboration it really is very difficult to know where to go next—”

She was interrupted by a knock on the door of her office. The school secretary put her head in. She shot a wary look at Jane. “Er, I thought I should let you know, Mr. and Mrs. Klein are already here.”

Mrs. Lipmann blanched. “But they’re not due for another hour.”

“My board meeting was rescheduled,” said a familiar, strident voice. Renata appeared at the secretary’s shoulder, clearly ready to barge on in. “So we just wondered if you could fit us in—” She caught sight of Jane and her face hardened. “Oh. I see.”

Mrs. Lipmann shot Jane an anguished look of apology. Jane knew from Madeline that Geoff and Renata regularly donated ostentatious sums of money to the school. “At last year’s school trivia night, we all had to sit there like grateful peasants while Mrs. Lipmann thanked the Kleins for paying for the entire school to be air-conditioned,” Madeline had told her. Then she’d brightened as a thought struck her. “Maybe Celeste and Perry can take them on this year. They can all play ‘I’m richer than you’ together.”

The school secretary wrung her hands. Mrs. Lipmann made a point of having an “open door” policy for school parents and was flexible about people dropping in without an appointment. The secretary had no experience with a situation like this. “Is it possible you could come back another time?” she said pleadingly to Renata.

“Not really,” said Renata. “Anyway, I assume we’re all here to discuss the same topic, aren’t we?”

Mrs. Lipmann hurried out from behind her desk. “Mrs. Klein, I really think it would be better—”

“This is fortuitous, in fact!” Renata strode past the secretary and
straight into the office, followed by a pale, stocky, ginger-haired man in a suit and tie, who was presumably Geoff. Jane hadn’t met him before. Most of the fathers were still strangers to her.

Jane got to her feet and held her arms protectively across her body, her hands clutching at her clothes as if they were about to be ripped off. The Kleins were about to expose her and lay her ugly, shameful secrets bare for all the other parents to see. Ziggy wasn’t the result of nice, normal, loving sex. He was the result of the shameful actions of a young, silly, fat, ugly girl.

Ziggy was not right, and he was not right because Jane had let that man be his father. She knew it was illogical, because Ziggy wouldn’t otherwise exist, but it felt logical, because Ziggy was always going to be her son, of course he was, how could she not be his mother? But he was meant to be born later, when Jane had found him a proper daddy and a proper life. If she’d done everything properly he wouldn’t be marked by this terrible genetic stain. He wouldn’t be behaving this way.

She thought of the first time she’d seen him. He was so upset to be born, screaming with his whole body, tiny limbs flailing as if he were falling, and her first thought was,
I’m so sorry, little baby. I’m so
sorry for putting you through this.
The exquisitely painful feeling that flooded her body reminded her of grief—even though she would have called it “joy,” it felt the same. She had thought the raging torrent of her love for this funny-looking, little red-faced creature would surely wash away the dirty little memory of that night. But the memory stayed, clinging to the walls of her mind like a slimy black leech.

“You need to get that son of yours under control.” Renata stepped directly in front of Jane. Her finger stabbed at the air near Jane’s chest. Her eyes were bloodshot behind her glasses. Her anger was so palpable and righteous in the face of Jane’s doubts.

“Renata,” remonstrated Geoff. He held out a hand to Jane. “Geoff Klein. Please excuse Renata. She’s very upset.”

Jane shook his hand. “Jane Chapman.”

“All right, well perhaps then, if we
are
all here together, perhaps we could have a constructive chat,” said Mrs. Lipmann with a tinkle of nerves in her cut-glass voice. “Can I offer anyone tea or coffee? Water?”

“I don’t want
refreshments
,” said Renata. Jane saw with something like sick fascination that Renata’s entire body was trembling. She looked away. Seeing the evidence of Renata’s raw emotions was like seeing her naked.

“Renata.”
Geoff held his arm diagonally across his wife’s body, as if she were about to step in front of a car.

“I’ll tell you what I want,” said Renata to Mrs. Lipmann. “I want her child to stay the hell away from my daughter.”